


Let the Only Sound be the Overflow

by thegoldhopeful



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Pining, Prophetic Dreams, foresight, hand holding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 19:58:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7771144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoldhopeful/pseuds/thegoldhopeful
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kozume Kenma doesn't know whether he is seeing the future in his dreams, or just a fantasy that he wants to believe. Also, the only person he wants to talk about it with is the only one who can't know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let the Only Sound be the Overflow

**Author's Note:**

> The first prompt was future, and I immediately thought of seeing the future, especially through dreams! I chose kuroken because I felt like Kenma is sort of the type of person to be a prophet (I didn't even realize the cover for the prompt had Kenma on it until I finished)
> 
> I'm trying to finish the other three spells as well as the overall challenge! Let's have fun~
>
>> Lay me down  
> Let the only sound  
> Be the overflow  
> Pockets full of stones  
> \- Florence + the Machine, "What the Water Gave Me"  
> 
> 
> Thanks to [Marco](http://emperor-seijurou.tumblr.com/) for editing and also kicking my lazy ass into gear so I could finish this on time.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Kozume Kenma has dreamt the futures of everyone he knows.

The issue being, of course, that dreams, even normal ones, function more like the collected allegorical poetry of a half mad shut-in than a series of images. Interpreting the future from them is like trying to forecast the weather from the movements of a yoyo. The nature of the future itself is no help either, half-solid and half-liquid, slithering away the moment it coalesces, like being able to hear an icecream truck but walking the entire neighbourhood without finding it.

Kenma has long since given up trying to wring any functionality from his foresight. He lets his dreams float on by, doesn’t distinguish between his normal visions and the ones fuelled by second sight, and attempts, not always successfully, to dodge his aunt’s palmistry lessons.

Recently, however, the dreams have been, if not more direct, then at least a little closer to home.

* * *

 The first thing Kemna notices is the smell. Petrichor, like the earth after the rain. He’s in a forest, the ground below him carpeted with bright green moss, greener than any moss has the right to be.  Upon closer inspection, it is less moss than the idea of moss. It fades in and out of focus, becoming more real the harder he looks at it. Squinting at it is like looking at a painting and seeing both the overall image and each individual brush stroke at the same time. But then again, all dreams act like that.

Kenma looks around, finding himself lying on a bed of the not-moss, his position undefined until he actively thinks about it. Around him the sun slants through the tree trunks in golden pillars, filling the forest with light.

He stands up and begins to walk, the moss so spongy under his feet that every step is an inch or two deeper than he expects. He wanders into a column of light and squints up into it. As he does, the dream shifts and he feels ferns brush his thighs through the cotton of the loose night shirt he was wearing when he fell asleep. The forest is suddenly greener than before and the ground is covered in blue green dabbled light. Above him, the trees rise through a layer of water before reaching to the sky. It’s like looking up from the bottom of a swimming pool. Kenma’s hair floats around his face, creeping across his field of vision, but he can still breathe normally.

The dream seems to want him to be there.

Still, Kenma looks around cautiously, paying careful attention to which movements feel natural and which feel like they’re pushing against the flow of the dream. Mostly his lucid dreams are normal, and taking the initiative in them is harmless, but the times he’s woken up in a cold sweat, blankets wrapped around his legs, and phantom claws plucking at his hair do not make testing dreams out worth the risk.

Back in the dream, the sunlight is warm and the ferns float back and forth with the gentle current of the water. The current changes smoothly into a breeze as the dream shifts once more. The scent of fresh laundry fills Kenma’s nose and as soon as he makes the connection he finds himself surrounded by drying white sheets flapping in the breeze. Above him the sky is bright blue and he’s enveloped by the indescribable essence of summer afternoons.

Kenma turns slowly and sets off down the narrow passageway between the sheets. The hanging laundry makes a swaying maze around him, filling his mind with a hundred vague memories of the sound of cicadas, his mother hanging sheets in rows along the balcony of their apartment, Kuroo dragging him into games of hide and seek between them.

“Kenma!” obligingly Kuroo appears, his skin dark and tanned against the white sheet that he lifts aside to get to Kenma. He’s smiling, and for a moment that smile is all that Kenma can see.

He has dreamt of Kuroo before. In the last months of his second year of middle school, his nights were filled with Kuroo waving good bye from inside a train while an emotion Kenma couldn’t place tore at his guts. Later, after Kuroo had graduated and started high school without him, he learned that it was called loneliness and felt a lot like silent empty afternoons spent gaming while Kuroo finished his homework, and like the unusually solitary walk to school. It was the feeling of a Kuroo shaped hole in his everyday life. Kenma had never liked school, but everyone noticed how much he’d studied to be able to attend Nekoma High School.

Foresight sometimes means predicting useless things that you already know will happen.

He’d predicted Kuroo’s future more than once as well, having reoccurring dreams of the sound of twigs snapping and the fall of autumn leaves. A week later, Kuroo had broken his arm falling out of a tree.

Sometimes his dreams only made sense in retrospect, their message so deceptively obvious in hindsight that it was easy to get trapped in the fool’s errand of interpreting them.

“Kenma! I missed you,” dream Kuroo says happily, grabbing Kenma’s hand.

Kuroo’s hand is warm and calloused from volleyball and much larger than Kenma’s. For a second, Kenma kicks himself for being able to so accurately imagine the feeling of his friend’s hand around his own, but at this self-reflection the dream starts to disintegrate and Kenma refocusses.

Kuroo pulls him through the maze of sheets, seeming to go on forever and making so many turns that Kenma’s head swims. Part of him realizes that it’s the dream becoming unstable as he drifts closer to the waking world, but most of him is still following Kuroo through the hot afternoon.

Suddenly, they reach the edge of the balcony and the Tokyo skyline opens up like a pop-up book, green and silver and glittering in the sun.

Kuroo draws Kenma towards him and for a second Kenma can feel the heat of the other man’s body and the beat of his heart like a racecar beneath his t-shirt.

Kenma wakes up with the sensation of Kuroo’s hand around his shoulder and the memory of his expression fresh in Kuroo’s mind.

It takes a few moments for Kenma to leave the dream. He watches the ceiling, dyed blue by the ever present glow of the city lights through his curtains, and listens as the sounds of the night slowly return to the room: the rumble of a single nocturnal car, the quiet thuds of steps somewhere outside the apartment, and finally the quiet tick of his clock. After a few minutes, Kenma rolls over. His clock reads 4:18am in green glow-in-the-dark numbers but the dream of mid-afternoon sun is still too fresh in Kenma’s mind for him to sleep.

He rolls out of bed, leaving his duvet on the floor. His mother’s miniature cactus, the only plant able to survive his negligence, casts a spiky blue shadow against the wall. He sidesteps a messy pile of empty CD cases and heads to the kitchen, letting the red light of the oven clock illuminate the tiny cluttered space.

Kenma pours himself a glass of iced tea from the bottle in the fridge and sits on the table to drink it, gazing out the glass balcony doors at the glittering city. This view of the skyline is at a different angle from the one in his dream, but he can’t remember where he’s seen that view before.

The reason precognisant dreams were so confusing, his aunt and only other psychic family member had told him, was because you can’t dream something you’ve never seen before. So it’s really your brain trying to construct an image of the future from things it’s already encountered.

Tokyo shines like a sea of stars in the night and Kenma finishes his iced tea and tries to forget the expression he dreamt onto Kuroo’s face.

Volleyball practise begins as the sun rises the next morning. Kenma walks the first few blocks to the train station alone, shivering in the cold, but finds Kuroo already there, waiting on the platform with an extra jacket, his nose hidden in an enormous scarf. He hands the jacket wordlessly to Kenma and peers down the empty tracks, looking for the train. The first commuter rush is just ending, so the platform isn’t busy.

Kuroo looks like the type of person who spends his time in dimly lit back alleys wearing a leather jacket and smoking a cigarette in the circle of dusty yellow light beneath the single lamp post. He’s looked like this for most of his life, despite never having touched a cigarette and only recently attaining his first leather jacket. It’s just something about his face. In reality, he sleeps a lot, practises more, and keeps Kenma from sinking into complacency and failing his chemistry class.

The train comes right on time, as always, and they crowd in. Kenma pulls out his phone as soon as he sits down and opens a game at random, tapping at it half heartedly. Beside him, Kuroo looks tiredly around the carriage, resting his back against the seat and window, one arm barely brushing Kenma’s, wrapped in the borrowed jacket. It’s not as large on Kenma than perhaps would be expected, and smells like Kuroo’s mom’s laundry detergent and the musty scent of Kuroo’s gym bag.

The walk from the train station is filled with the crackle of November frost, the crunch of Kuroo’s feet on the frozen sidewalk and Kuroo’s hair in the crystal clear cold air and Kuroo’s hand red and chapped from volleyball and the oncoming winter and Kenma tries to focus on his game but irresistible gravity of Kuroo is pulling him in.

Kenma watches the screen of his cellphone, and Kuroo pulls him out of the path of an oncoming telephone pole. It’s a mundane gesture, something Kuroo has done a thousand times before, but to Kenma the moment of touch feels special in a way it never was before.

The gym door opens with an explosion of light and sound. Lev bounces out to meet them, somehow just as full of energy in the early morning as he is the rest of the day. Yaku quickly follows to reel him back in. Practise passes in a flurry of movement and heat. Volleyball is a game of speed and teamwork, but also a game of prediction. As he sets, Kenma can see the arc of the ball even before it leaves his grip. It’s not foresight, not really, but it comes pretty close.

He spends the rest of the day gazing out of the window into the grey sky. Last night’s dream floats around in his mind. Kuroo’s face, in the last moment before Kenma woke up, surfaces again. Kuroo had been caught the moment before he smiled, his eyes on Kenma had been soft and summery; winter was never Kuroo’s season.

That expression held everything Kenma wished he could have.

The thought takes him by surprise, bringing him back into the dreary classroom, lesson scratched in white across the black board. Everything Kenma wished he could have. The realization is cold and sticky and runs down his back in an icy trickle of sweat. His dreams are nothing more than dreams after all, the only way he can tell which ones are prophecy and which ones are merely fabrications is in retrospect, after some come true and some do not.

He worries the rest of the day away in a mess of nervous tension, coiled and brittle like a frozen spring. On the way home, after their second round of practise, Kuroo notices how he drifts across the sidewalk, mind frosty as the morning had been.

“Are you doing good?” Kuroo asks, he’s perfectly capable of speaking with good grammar but chooses not to, during their summer camp Akaashi called it the ‘Bokuto Effect.’

Kenma nods, not trusting his vocal chords to obey him and cracking the word ‘okay’ into more of a view than Kuroo needs into Kenma’s current predicament.

Kuroo doesn’t look satisfied. He looks like he knows more than he says but that is normal for Kuroo. It’s just something about his face.

When they part at the end of the block Kenma looks after Kuroo and wishes he could confide in Kuroo the same way they had as kids, hiding in a pillow fort (entirely unnecessary but Kuroo had insisted on it) and trading secrets on rainy evenings.

But now Kenma’s face is warm from looking at Kuroo and his stomach twists at the thought of a future together and he’s not the same boy as he was back then.

That evening, instead of studying, he texts Hinata.

> To: Shoyou
> 
> From: Kenma
> 
> r u busy
> 
> To: Kenma
> 
> From: Shoyou
> 
> KENMAAAAA!!! No i’m not just finished practise camp with stingyshima >__<

Hinata had excitedly messaged him about the extra practise camp that he’d broken into earlier that week. Kenma had personally thought it was too much of a pain to travel to another city just to be a ball boy, but that had never mattered to Hinata.

> To: Shoyou
> 
> From: Kenma
> 
> i need advice abt smthg 
> 
> To: Kenma
> 
> From: Shoyou
> 
> definitely tell me i’m happy to help!!!!!

Kenma stares at the blue glow of the phone screen, trying to formulate a response. It was one thing to think about his problem, about Kuroo, but entirely another to tell someone else about it.

> To: Shoyou
> 
> From: Kenma
> 
> have been dreaming of kuro bt i dunno if its whts gonna happen or wht i wana happen

Hinata’s response is uncharacteristically slow. Kenma switches through his apps, but he can’t get back into any of his games, too wrapped up in his own head.

> To: Kenma
> 
> From: Shoyou
> 
> u should talk to HIM!!! ur friends write?? kuroosan is pesky and cunning but he’ll know wat to do

Kenma considers the response. His first reaction is a fist around his heart. He wants to tell Kuroo. Hinata’s right, Kuroo would know what to do. But what if it really is a dream? What if the future he is seeing is a long way off?

What if Kuroo doesn’t like him back and couldn’t stand to continue being friends and a frozen waterfall pours through Kenma’s chest.

Face hot, he quickly taps out a response and sends it before he can back out.

> To: Shoyou
> 
> From: Kenma
> 
> dreamin in a romantic way

Hinata’s response is again a long time coming and Kenma spends this time clenching his phone and trying to drown out the internal chorus of _you’re never enough you’re never enough you’re never enough_.

> To: Kenma
> 
> From: Shoyou
> 
> CONGRATULATION!! kenma u gotta say u luv him
> 
> To: Shoyou
> 
> From: Kenma
> 
> But wht if he doesn’t

There’s another pause and Kenma considers wrapping himself in his duvet and staying there for the rest of his life.

> To: Kenma
> 
> From: Shoyou
> 
> sugasan always says u gotta take the leap sometimes. i can ask him abt this specifically if u want???
> 
> To: Shoyou
> 
> From: Kenma
> 
> pls dnt tell anyone
> 
> To: Kenma
> 
> From: Shoyou
> 
> kay :D good luck!!

Kenma rolls over on to his back and looks at the ceiling. Most problems solve themselves, but he’s not sure he wants to wait this one out. He’s not sure if he can wait this one out.

* * *

 

That night, he dreams again.

He’s on his balcony again, but this time the Tokyo skyline is red like hibiscus flowers, as if the whole city is covered in peony petals floating on the breeze. The sky is even bluer because of it, a deep blue, not like an ocean, but the blue that a child given a box of crayons would pick out to colour the sky. Despite the sunny day, the sun itself is invisible, and Kenma can see no shadows. The air is so thick with summer heat that when it moves Kenma swears he can see its lazy curls rolling in the breeze.

Beside him is Kuroo, and Kenma isn’t surprised. It’s just a dream, he reminds himself as Kuroo smiles down at him. Just a dream. Just a dream…

Kuroo takes his hand, holding it gently. His hand isn’t as hot as Kenma expected, but dry and chapped and just as delicate as when he dumps the ball in front of his opponents. It feels solid and very undreamlike. Kenma looks up into Kuroo’s face and Kuroo rubs his thumb over the back of Kenma’s hand.

Kenma’s chest is full of cherry blossoms and he feels like he is floating. Kuroo looks back over the city and Kenma follows his gaze. The sky is suddenly filled with bluish humpback whales swimming above the rooftops like the blue summer is all the ocean they’ve ever known. They twist and roll through the water, tail fins propelling them through the air. Bubbles float around them like a thousand balloons.

Kuroo shines like the sun, his hand in Kenma’s brighter than any flesh should be. He climbs up on to the balcony rail, helping Kenma up beside him. He’s laughing and the sound is like the summer and Kenma can’t help laughing along. He’s always been safe with Kuroo.

A whale comes up and Kuroo holds out his hand to it. It nuzzles him like a dog. Kenma curls away from it and its soccer ball sized eyes, into Kuroo’s chest. Kuroo laughs again and the whale moves on.

“Let’s jump,” Kuroo said happily, “they’ll let us ride them!”

Suddenly Kenma feels cold crashing around him. It’s a dream, he knows it’s a dream, but the ground is still a long way down.

Kuroo turns to face him and cups Kenma’s face in one warm palm, forcing him to meet his gaze. “This is a dream,” he says seriously, “you can trust me.”

Kenma feels his heart beating like a broken metronome stuck on a fast march. Kuroo takes a step into thin air. Kenma grips his hand and follows him.

They hit the wooden floor together. It’s the same feeling as missing a stair at night and plummeting down for the briefest of moments before hitting solid ground. Kenma blinks against suddenly bright white lights ahead of them, at the end of a tunnel. Beside him, Kuroo is suddenly wearing his volleyball uniform: number one, captain. He’s still holding Kenma’s hand.

Kenma looks behind him and the rest of the team is there. Lev, long and gangly and more elbow than anything else, Yaku, more angry mushroom than man, Tora and Kai, Inuoka and Shibayama. In the shadows of the corridor Nekomata-sensei is there too, looking proud and happy and a little tired.

Kuroo leads them forward and they emerge into the light. They’re in the Tokyo main gym, the huge arena lit by hundreds of floodlights. As they come into sight the crowd roars like a hundred motorcycles, like a ravenous beast. Kuroo squeezes his hand. He looks more Kuroo than usual, in a way that Kenma doesn’t have the words to describe.

“How did we get here?” Kenma asks breathlessly, half to himself.

“We did it together,” Kuroo says, and even though Kenma knows he means the whole team it sounds like just the two of them. He turns to look at Kenma and the background drops out of the dream.

They’re alone in innumerable shades of summer light. Kenma can’t tell if Kuroo is actually speaking or not but his voice echoes around them, quiet and disembodied, an echo of something Kenma knows Kuroo’s said before.

“....our brain, spine, and heart…”

As the last word fades out of the air like dissolving paint, Kenma wakes up.

It’s morning, and the early morning sun filters in pale white rays through the folds of Kenma’s curtains. His phone is unplugged on his desk, and when Kenma turns it on, he sees it’s barely still alive. The familiar routine of plugging it in to charge and rolling around to look at it is enough to wake Kenma up fully, enough to allow him to banish the emotions thumping through his chest from his mind.

“Kenma?” his mother calls from the kitchen, “are you up?”

“Yes mom,” Kenma says, muffled by his duvet. He’s not sure whether or not she heard him but she bustles into his room with a teapot in one hand and an oven mit on the other.

“You should come out for breakfast; growing boys need to eat.”

“Yes mom,” Kenma says again, and rolls over to face the wall.

His phone dings. A message from Hinata. The phone buzzes a second time as another message from Hinata arrives. The first is a picture of the Karasuno first years, or at least most of them, Hinata was unable to get anything higher than Tsukishima’s chin in the picture. There’s no caption, and Kenma is almost certain that he sent it by accident. Hinata handles a phone the same way he handles a volleyball, often with disastrous consequences. Kenma opens the message next.

> To: Kenma
> 
> From: Shoyou
> 
> hve u told kuroosan u like him yet????

Kenma has to read that more than once to make sure he’s seeing it right. He shakes the thoughts of confessing to Kuroo, of a relationship with Kuroo, away from the corners of his conscious.

> To: Shoyou
> 
> From: Kenma
> 
> Just got up
> 
> To: Kenma
> 
> From: Shoyou
> 
> WATTTT????? Its like 11!!!!!!!

> To: Kenma
> 
> From: Shoyou
> 
> u gotta tell him!!! sugasan says its a good idea!

Kenma groans. He shouldn’t have told Hinata about this. He shouldn’t have even allowed himself to think this much about it. He should have ignored it and let it slide by like train running through the station.

> To: Shoyou
> 
> From: Kenma
> 
> i cant. i told u not to tell anyone
> 
> To: Kenma
> 
> From: Shoyou
> 
> u’ve got so much to get frm this tho!!!! I didnt!!!!

That was true. Kenma knew it was true, but he also had so much to lose. He could gain a romantic relationship, but at the price of a friendship he’d had almost as long as he could remember. The thing that terrified him the most about loving Kuroo was the thought of losing his best friend.

> To: Kenma
> 
> From: Shoyou
> 
> sugasan told me to tell u idk why

Kenma had no so much known as heavily suspected there was something unusual about Karasuno’s back-up setter as soon as he’d met Sugawara. Hinata had confirmed his suspicions a couple months later, mentioning casually that his senpai could see the near future, but only if it was occurring at a distance. Kenma supposes Tokyo counts as far off, at least if one is in Miyagi prefecture.

It’s not that he doesn’t trust Sugawara, but he knows perhaps better than anyone that foresight is rarely a straightforward art. If someone acts like it is, like conclusions are easy to draw, then they’re lying, and they want money. What Sugawara had seen was probably true, eventually, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything useful for Kenma in the moment.

He goes back to pondering the dream. They’d been in the Tokyo main gym, walking onto a single volleyball court. Did that mean Nekoma would make it to finals? Who had the other team been? He’d only caught the faintest glimpse of them before the dream had changed again. They’d been indistinct, merely a faceless enemy. Did that mean it was a team he didn’t know about? Or simply that whatever had given him the gift of foresight had decided that was something he shouldn’t see?

There is a knock on the door to the apartment, Kenma ignores it, too busy wallowing in his interpretation of the dream to really care. Part of his mind hears the murmur of voices in the hall, but he’s not focusing enough to actually listen to what they’re saying.

His bedroom door bangs open.

“Kenma, volleyball, go!” It’s Kuroo.

Kenma has to blink back a few seconds of nostalgia for the times when Kuroo would barge in every weekend and drag him out of his room.

He half sits up, twisting around to see the door. His view is partially blocked by strands of hair but through them he can see Kuroo, taller than before but with the same messy hair and volleyball tucked under his arm.

Kuroo enters and closes the door behind him with a quiet click.

“You can’t hide in here all day,” he tells Kenma, making himself comfortable on the side of the bed not currently occupied by Kenma’s blanket cocoon, “your mom’s worried about you.”

“She’s always worried about me,” Kenma says, turning back to his phone and trying to ignore the fact that he notices Kuroo’s proximity in a way he never had before.

“You looked really tired yesterday,” Kuroo continues, ignoring Kenma’s response, “and you’re tired today. Have you been dreaming?” He lets the question hang like a spiderweb in the still air.

Of course, Kuroo had been the first person Kenma told when he’d dreamt terrible things only to see them play out the next day or week or month like a terrible theatre reenacting his thoughts. He’d been afraid back then. To an anxious and introverted kid, having that kind of power over the outside world was terrifying. Kuroo had acted like it was a superpower, like it made Kenma special in the coolest way. It had helped Kenma come to terms with standing out.

The moment of silence stretches out a little too long and Kuroo says, “you have been dreaming.” It’s not a question this time.

Kenma looks away and this lack of answer is all the confirmation Kuroo needs. Kenma may be an expert judge of character, but Kuroo has always known him almost better than he knows himself.

“Please tell me,” Kuroo says, and even though Kenma isn’t looking at him, he can hear the worry in Kuroo’s voice. “You can trust me.”

He says it in exactly the same way as he had said it in the dream and Kenma’s skin crawls with realization.

“I dreamt…” he begins and trails off, the words stuck in his throat like rose thorns.

He feels Kuroo’s hand on top of the duvet, gently stroking the area where his shoulder should be. The motion is muffled by the layers of feathers and so light it’s barely there. It makes Kenma want to cry.

_Nothing ventured, nothing gained._ It’s Hinata’s motto, and Kenma is only half certain that Hinata  knows what it really means. Then again, Hinata only ever really thinks about the possible gains, the wins, the glory. That’s why he flies so high with no regrets. Kenma is never able to get past the possibility of loss, of failure.

He takes a deep breath.

“I dreamt of you. I dreamt of us together and I’m afraid because I don’t know if that’s the future or just something that I want and even if it is the future I don’t want to force you into anything,” the words tumble out into the duvet and Kenma curls further in on himself, shrinking away from Kuroo as he says them. The phrase ‘I don’t want to lose you’ hangs in the air unsaid.

Kuroo is silent for so long than Kenma wonders if he heard or not. He fully expects Kuroo to launch himself off the bed, out the apartment, and out of Kenma’s life. He shouldn’t have said it. He should have made something up, let Kuroo comfort him and then move on. A little lie would have saved them both. He-

Kuroo grabs him, still wrapped in the bundle of blankets, and pulls the entire pile into a tight hug. Kenma can’t think anymore. His mind is blank. He can hear Kuroo’s breathing, harder than he’d expected, as if Kuroo’s had just run a couple of blocks.

“What if it’s not the future?” Kenma says again, without thinking. His voice is far more desperate than he’d like, but wrapped in Kuroo’s arms he feels like he’s balancing on the knife’s edge between safety and the promise held in the fist around his heart that squeezes harder and harder the more he thinks about Kuroo’s face.

“I don’t care,” Kuroo says, burying his face in the duvet. “If you want this, then I do too.”

Kenma minds swims. Suddenly all the times he caught Kuroo gazing in his direction surface. But Kuroo had been looking past him, or watching the ball, or he’d been the only thing to look at in the nearly empty train. Hadn’t he?

Part of Kenma feels foolish for not noticing, but most of him feels like he’s walking on clouds. Kuroo doesn’t let go.

* * *

 

In this dream, Kenma is falling.

He plummets through thin air, the wind gusting past his body, his hair pulled away from his face by the speed of his fall. His eyes are clenched shut and his body is frozen with terror as he falls. He’s been falling for a long time but somehow that only serves to compound his fear. He could hit the ground at any moment. Anticipating the landing almost makes the pain feel real.

“Kenma.” Kuroo’s voice, yelling, a long way off.

“Kenma!” It gets louder as he approaches, and suddenly Kenma feels hands on his back, rolling him over, gripping his arms.

“Kenma, you have to open your eyes,” Kuroo yells over the rushing wind.

Kenma cracks open one, squinting against the moving air. Kuroo’s face is right in front of him. He’s falling too, clinging on to Kenma’s shoulders and somersaulting through the air with him.

“Open your eyes. You don’t have to be afraid,” Kuroo says again.

Kenma’s eyes snap open. He stops spinning through the air.

His legs are stretched out, and Kuroo helps him extend his arms too, holding his hands, keeping them both steady like skydivers. The wind pushes Kuroo’s lopsided bangs out of his face and he looks younger than usual, more innocent. He smiles at Kenma and Kenma is too captivated by that expression to feel afraid.

“Look down,” Kuroo yells.

Kenma does, and sees the hills of Tokyo spread out below him, covered in buildings like tiny ants or miniature models. The city is dark with the last shadows of night but as he watches the sun rises beside them, slowly overtaking the city in a yellow glow. It paints one side of Kuroo’s face with the same golden hue, and he looks at Kenma as if Kenma is the world.

**Author's Note:**

> It's my first time using blockquote to format text messages and they're really ugly but I can't change them. pls be gentle
> 
> If you liked this story please leave kudos and comments; I love hearing form readers! 
> 
> If you want to discuss magic, fantasy, and what I've got planned for the rest of the exchange, hit me up at [my tumble blog](http://h0pe-y.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Thanks for reading!!


End file.
